"Fellow" Liberal
https://masto.ai/@parkermolloy/109938638868497425
I wrote a NYT op-ed arguing that liberals will be more effective against DeSantis if they keep their heads. Response so far demonstrates they have no intention of doing that at all.
Yeah. Good. Keep running the worst evil you can find so that people like Joe Biden can coast in as the lesser of the two. It's not like we just had a goddamn election where this ploy failed and led directly to the outcome you're claiming to be preventing.
But, y'know he's right. We should keep our heads. I mean, all of his devastating legislation only affected minorities, the poor, and especially lgbtq folk, so really nothing to get worked up about
:lenin-rage: :agony-limitless: :guts-rage:
let me guess DeSantis is a more acceptable version of Trump because he's less loud and uncouth
Didn't they do this shit with Trump in the lead up to 2016? :seen-this-one:
No, nobody took him seriously.
And if Trump proved anything, it's that the elected branch of the government is not in charge. The unelected bureacracy, if you call them the Blob, deep state, administrative state, whatever, they're the ones who are really in charge. Ever since Trump they have treated the office of President as if it were vacant, and nobody has really noticed any change. They keep on doing whatever they want to do.
That's why he's saying not to be worried about DeSantis. Because even if he wins, nothing will change.
if you call them the Blob, deep state, administrative state, whatever,
ehh I’m going to take issue with one part of this: you shouldn’t group in the deep state and the administrative state together and treat them like the same thing.
Deep state = the FBI, CIA, DHS, NSA, DoD, and other entities that are very clearly meant to protect the interests of capital and empire using lethal force if necessary. These are the guys who spy on both US citizens as well as everyone else in the world, infiltrate activist groups, and carry out coups and color revolutions.
Administrative state: the FDA, SEC, CFPB, CSPC, Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior, and other parts of the government that, while certainly not totally innocuous, mostly just deal with regulating and administrating certain types of economic activity, and were created out of necessity in response to clear and obvious market failures.
Before the Trump era, Republicans generally supported the first group and hated the second. Now Republicans hate both of them but for very different reasons.
They originated out of different material causes and leftists should note the distinctions.
The blob is what Obama's people called them. Deep state is what Trump's people called them. After the corporate media attached the term "deep state" to "pants-on-head conspiracy theorist" they switched to administrative state to get away from that.
The term deep state was around for decades before Trump, originally referring to clandestine networks in Turkey that connected fascist orgs like the Ergenekon group to like-minded individuals within the police, intelligence community, military and the justice system. It's a given that other nations have conspiracies like this as well (that's what it is, an actual, bonafide conspiracy), such as the NSU complex in Germany. I'm sure US posters here could name white supremacist networks fitting the bill as well.
But the deep state in the original sense isn't just "all those weird three letter agencies doing god knows what", it's a fascist network that has infiltrated various, separated arms of the government to wield coordinated institutional power against groups and individuals it targets.
The first time I heard the term was after 9/11 in reference to Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies, and why Pakistan took such bad-seeming actions so consistently. Because these actions served the interest of the deep state, and the Pakistani people could go fuck themselves.
The behavior of Biden's CDC re:covid shows that the administrative state is just as interested in protecting capital. And that's not getting into BLM with natural resource extraction, etc. These agencies may have been created for certain reasons but since Carter at least the entire administrative state has been a revolving door for capital to plant their lackeys in order to get regulatory outcomes that favor them.
At the end of the day, we live under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Any administrative arm created by that dictatorship serves their interests. Some of them may have been originally created from a more long-term outlook on those interests that can look prole-friendly on the surface (i.e. the NLRB), but it all serves the same ruling class.
yeah no matter who is in charge the civil service are the ones carrying out policy. That's kind of inherent to a bureacracy
a president aware of their power of appointments can actually affect that bureacracy quite a lot
also Trump and Biden weren't exactly hands on administrators. Biden might actually have dementia
The unelected bureacracy, if you call them the Blob, deep state, administrative state, whatever, they’re the ones who are really in charge. Ever since Trump they have treated the office of President as if it were vacant, and nobody has really noticed any change.
Mayor Pete is powerless before the Department of Transportation Deep State!
Betsy Devos wasn't elected to be Secretary of Education either. Do you think she did Trump's bidding or do you think she was more interested in serving the interest of the state?
Trump won because of russian meddling, sweaty, and now we are making them pay in a holy democratic war. They'll never dare to post on the internet during the next election! :liberalism:
Genuinely, do these people do anything now but try to trick us and each other? Is there anything else to justify their existence?
At this point voting for trump isn't accelerationist anymore. He is the least bad option.
He vowed to ban hrt nationwide the only non accelerationist option is :fedposting:
And he might. But only way liberals will fight it is if trump proposes it. If it passes under biden they will say nothing, same as abortion.
Honestly I don’t even fucking know lmao. Like he lists out a ton of reasons that desantis would be awful based on his governance of Florida and then just goes “but that doesn’t mean he’d be worse than trump who also did that but also banned Muslims!! Remember the Muslim travel ban?!”
And then he’s like some people say trumps ability to do bad things was matched by his ineptness, basically the desantis is a more competent fascist reasoning, and responds to that by saying actually that the government plans to reign trump in more next time. Which seems like a point that makes desantis seem worse to me but … :shrug-outta-hecks:
It really seems comes down to “desantis more civil uwu”
banned Muslims!! Remember the Muslim travel ban?!”
except Desantis was a pencil pusher who was present in Guantanamo bay
and betrayed his clients' confidence for the purpose of enhancing their torture
And laughted and smiled at their torture too. Holy fuck this is just evil.
Also the immigrant busing shit and overreach he recently did wrt that. No reason to think he wouldn’t be emboldened to do similar things as president.
He as a human rights lawyer in Guantanamo Bay during the Bush administration. If that doesn't show he's objectively evil, then I don't know what is.
Liberals will just "he's more than his job" like they did with Kamala being a prosecutor.
“desantis more civil uwu”
getting to the point where i'm going to start carving this into liberal skulls
Paywalled, so who can even say anymore. You'd need to be subscribed to the Failing NYT to find out.
"I want to move things further to the right but I still need to appear moderate so I'm going to type a very polite essay about why right wingers are good actually"
Once again, further proof that "liberal's" opposition to Trump is due to how gauche and rude he is, not anything of substance.
Demon Licker https://twitter.com/DamonLinker
https://www.damonlinker.com/bio.htm
Extra dunk tank - Matt Duss, :bernie-pout: 's fmr Foreign Policy minder.
I disagree but Linker, as usual, makes a good case worth considering.
This dude's own bio lists that he owns a lot of books under his relevant experience. Clearly he's smarter than us.
Non-zero chance DeSantis would actually try and bomb Cuba solely to Own the Libs. The man's entire MO is to unload red meat as fast as he can truck it in.
By contrast, Biden gives absolutely no shits. He's happy enough to just eat ice cream while the world burns.
It would be funny to see the GOP heel turn on Russia/Ukraine, though. Just stomping the breaks on Zelensky and demanding Regime Change before they send any more money.
Biden hasn't made being trans illegal and made 'birth of the nation' mandatory viewing in American schools.
I think that's an overly generous assumption, given the opportunity they would 1000% use federal authority.
I will take Trump over DeSantis any day. Call me a lib if you like, i don't give a shit
yeah, he's a double edged sword for the fascist right. his bombast and media savvy makes him a great spokesman, but his childish incompetence means putting him in a position of power makes it harder for them to operate at the capacity they'd like to.
